Utter
by Virgo
Summary: After a bewildering beginning to the college experience, Nita seeks out Kit. A close look at the hard transition that is college.


**A/N:** This has a couple of influences. One is my annoyance with the Young Wizards are in College!fics that are posted here, and how they don't seem to have much of the actual college experience in them. The other is my own college experience, where I felt much like Nita feels here. Her emotions were my own.

The other note: The colleges I have chosen for Nita and Kit are real. I forget now why I chose them in the first place, but I thought they fit their personalities. They are close together. If you are curious, feel free to google and/or mapquest them.

This is a one-shot._

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_Kirshnap, hiiisss._

Nita stared at the multicolored bus floor for a moment before she stepped on and allowed her two-quarter student fare to fall into the coin abyss. Her mind lagged behind her body and it was a moment or two after she had sat down in the first unoccupied seat – a seat she would have to vacate in favor of the elderly or disabled – when she realized that she was leaving her college campus and heading towards Providence. She was going to see Kit. She was going to go to seek something she was missing.

_I love my college_, Nita thought. _I love the way all of my classes are in the same building, I love the way that I live with five other people in our suite, I love my classes and I know plenty of people who I hope are my friends… but I miss the people who I **know** are my friends, and the time to be alone, and homework that was just homework and not studying. I miss home, and normalcy, and serenity…_

Nita stopped thinking. Her head was too full of new relationship dynamics, schemes to get all of her reading notes done, lecture notes transcribed, and papers written. It was too full of what used to be – not that high school was the highlight of her life, by any means, but she had time to go out and talk with the Rowan, swim with S'ree, and laugh with Kit. Things were normal. Thing were normal, even when things became exceptional.

She chose Bryant University because it was small, because it was near a big city where she could be of some use, and because they didn't seem to mind that her list of extracurricular activities was short. Kit chose Providence College, which had surprised the both of them by the proximity – they had done their college lists completely separate, knowing that what was good for one of them wasn't necessarily good for the other – and now they were only fifteen minute bus rides from one another, but growing up in completely different worlds.

College, for Nita, wasn't meant to be a growing separate from Kit. College was another step in the education process… and yet she didn't know what she was doing there. Adult Wizards needed jobs, and she was going to college to learn something, to become something, and live a life that people would see as _something_, while she did something else under their noses.

She missed the certainty of what _was_, what was fact. And now she didn't even know if Kit would remember her. That was a stupid thought. He would remember her, but would he want to see her? Would he want to hang out with his high school best friend who went to a different college, fifteen minutes away when he had plenty of new friends right there? Nita tried to stop thinking, but for all she just wanted to revel in the nonsilence of the panting of the bus as it carried her and various other passengers towards the other side of Providence to find Kit. She got off the bus at one end of campus, an easy walking distance to Kit's dorm. But as her feet hit the pavement her mind went straight to Kit and her feet went wandering. She walked up a brick path that was not where she wanted to go, and found herself in front of a church.

Around the church, suburban sapling trees called out to Nita, a cacophony of high voices chatting about children and gospel passages and hymns. Impatiens sat in rings of mulch around those new trees, adding rose and salmon splashes of color to the deep green lawn, humming in chorus and giggling at the results. Nita paused a moment, this giddy atmosphere of simple existence grating against her nerves as well as soothing them. _I know I should not ask for anything,_ thought Nita. _But this feeling of utter contentment and utter abandonment is not going to do anything positive for the universe._

She stepped through the open door and into the darkened back of the church. The air was cooler inside, and the place merely hummed with emptiness. She stepped back out of the door to the church, not sure what she wanted from this encounter, and ran down the path she came up and onwards to where she would find Kit.

She found him, talking to people in the hallway, a mixed group of guys and girls. He looked over as she set foot on his floor, without her making a sound and he smiled and excused himself. The group quieted, suspicious looks thrown over their shoulders as they looked at who Kit recognized, who Kit knew and analyzed how close he stood to this girl who was not familiar, and may not have been allowed.

Nita looked at her friend, her life long friend, and couldn't say a word. She didn't know how to explain it, she didn't know how to justify it, or even how to being to fix it. She just shook her head, hid her face in her hands, and stood there.

When Kit wrapped his arms around her, letting her head rest on his shoulder and resting his head on hers she started sobbing – no tears, just sincere dry sobs – and he held her, not asking a single question, not saying a single word, and not seeing anyone else.

If you're afraid of losing someone, the surest way to lose them is to hold on as tight as you can. Nita, afraid to lose, did nothing but open herself up to the future. Kit was the one who held on to her, held her together, and there were no words to say.

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Please tell me what you think! 


End file.
